Heroes (3 page)

“How was Chicago?” she asked.

“Busy.”

She could have ripped any information she wanted out of his mind, of course, but the struggle would be fierce, and terrible for their relationship. Besides, it wasn’t the sort of thing she did. “I hate it when you get monosyllabic.”

He turned his head long enough to give her a grin. “I know.”

She bared fangs at him, and he laughed. “I love you, Hunter,” he said.

Char basked in the words. Haven wasn’t exactly vocal about his emotions, and his emotions were very rarely tender. He was a hard man. So hard that he’d been known to refer to her, a proud, fierce daughter of the Nighthawk line, as Little Mary Sunshine.

“How are you planning to spend your time?” she asked him.

He reached over to cover her hand with his. She liked how he always felt so warm. “Why don’t we get a suite somewhere? The Palms? Bellagio? Wherever suits your fancy. Make it a private holiday.”

She liked the sound of that. She also noticed he hadn’t mentioned the Silk Road. Surely he knew about the place. Char gave Haven a very skeptical look. “What are you really up to?”

He had a deep, rough voice, and his laughter was the same. “Damn it, woman, when did you get to be so suspicious?”

“Since I met you.”

“I’ve created a monster.”

“No. Jimmy Bluecorn did that.”

He gave a low, jealous growl that made her smile. That Haven could be so possessive without sharing a companion bloodbond with her flattered her. And it strengthened her opinion that a master-slave relationship between mortals and strigoi was unnecessary as well as demeaning. She also noticed that Haven didn’t try to tell her that she wasn’t a monster. She loved him for that.

“Did I really love Jimmy?” she murmured. “Or did he make me?” She was immediately assailed by guilt at such a disloyal thought toward her vampire sire.

Haven closed his fingers tightly over Char’s hand when he felt her beginning to pull away. “Doesn’t matter,” he told her. “He’s over and done with.”

“That’s true. There’s nothing more ephemeral in the world than a vampire’s relationship with a companion. Nothing more forbidden than continuing to be lovers after the rebirth.” Char made a disgusted face. “Can’t imagine wanting to—everything is so different—after.”

Haven knew Char wanted to believe that a proper vampire like herself would never harbor any heretical thoughts. When it came to this Bluecorn dude, Haven was happy to encourage her orthodoxy. That didn’t mean he didn’t have questions about vampire beliefs. Not so long ago his attitude toward all supernatural creatures was that the only good monster was a dead one. He still held that belief a good seventy-five percent of the time, but lately he’d developed quite an interest in strigoi history and culture. Part of it was because it was smart to know your enemy. Some of it was simple curiosity.

“Who made up the laws?” he asked. “The Council?”

Good questions. When he was a vampire, he’d have an obligation to know the Laws. And respect those who enforced them—nest leaders and Nighthawks. For a mortal to know that the Council existed was against the Laws. It wasn’t something even regular vampires were encouraged to think about, and never to question. Haven already knew more than he should. But not from her.

“Can’t talk about it,” she told him. “You know that.”

“Won’t.”

“Can’t.” He continued to hold her hand, though she felt his frustration through this connection. “You’re a monster hunter, Jebel, not a historian. I’ll help you find the bad things out there—the things that need killing—I’ll bend the Laws, but I won’t break them. It would be fatal for both of us if I did,” she added.

The problem with Char was that she actually believed in the boogeyman when she
was
the boogeyman—woman. He liked her the way she was, prim and proper and civilized, but he was an agent of chaos. “The Laws of the Blood are not for me.”

“Not until you become a vampire,” she agreed.

He didn’t know if she just didn’t get it, or was being deliberately obtuse, but Haven didn’t push it. No one’s laws were for him. Never had been. He didn’t recall how many states had warrants out for him and he didn’t care. He was an
outlaw.
Did Char really believe he’d become law abiding once he was a vampire? If he became a vampire.

When. It was only a matter of time before one of them gave in to the urge to share blood. Haven figured he’d be the one to crack. He’d considered killing her, especially when the urge to beg for a taste of her blood nearly drove him out of his mind. She’d told him that it would be heaven, and he believed her. He wasn’t meant for heaven. Wasn’t sure he wanted immortality. He didn’t think he could kill her.

But he needed to know
how.

That was one of the things he hoped to learn on this trip to Las Vegas.

Chapter 2

“WHO WAS THAT woman?”

Eddie might have told Martina, if she hadn’t hit him while she was asking. In his day women didn’t hit people. People hit women, and that was the way it ought to be. The world was not fair or right and he wanted it to go back to behaving sanely instead of him being considered one of the crazy ones.

Eddie wiped blood from his mouth and licked it off his fingers. No use in wasting it. He dared to shoot a glance of hatred at the younger vampire, but saw his animosity bounce off the armor of her righteous superiority. Martina wanted to change the world. She’d decided he was going to help her, but she hadn’t bothered to ask. He was one of the masses she was determined to save, but he was beneath her.

“Who was she, wraith?”

Wraith
was the fancy name the revolutionaries gave the street ones, the light lovers.
Neon junkie
wasn’t politically correct. Changing the words didn’t change the facts. She’d probably never read Orwell. Or anyone else. Who read in this age? Who remembered that literacy was a tool of power?

“An old girlfriend,” he answered before Martina hit him again. “From out of town.”

Martina sneered, as though the notion of him having had lovers, or even friends, was ludicrous. “Will she interfere with us?”

“Did she stop and help when you were kidnapping me?” Did Martina recognize that Valentine wasn’t mortal? Did she realize what Valentine was?

Martina laughed, though it sounded like something she thought she ought to do more than any genuine amusement. “Then let’s forget about your
friend
and concentrate on what’s important.”

Eddie looked around the living room of his studio apartment. There was nothing important here. The place was shabby, but it wasn’t squalid. He had a slave who saw to his comfort. Three slaves, two of them showgirls. He’d always had a thing for long-legged women. The slave who lived with him had been a showgirl once; now she stayed at home, gave blood, and did the housekeeping. He hated that Martina had ordered his slave to leave, and the woman had obeyed another vampire without question. The same way he’d obeyed. Both he and his slave knew he wasn’t strong enough to do anything else.

“What is important?” he asked. “What do you want from me?”

She took a seat in his leather recliner. Sat in it straight and regal like she was queen of the world. “A great many things are important. Things you do not need to know.”

Things he didn’t want to know, he was sure. Fanatics were boring as hell. But this one was dangerous. “Fine. It’s getting late.” Couldn’t she feel the sun? Maybe only the old ones, the light-sensitive ones, were truly always aware of the coming of the sun. “Tell me what you want and—”

“And what, wraith?” Martina lifted her head haughtily. “Are you trying to order me out of your”—she swept a hand through the air—“nest?”

He had a home, he didn’t want a nest. Why did someone who was trying to change the rules of society have to have such conventional attitudes about how vampires were supposed to live? He didn’t point out the inconsistency to Martina. She’d brought him here to show him she could invade his private dwelling with impunity. A common vampire power game.

“You’re the one who brought me back here,” he told her. “I wasn’t planning on coming home so early.”

He’d been heading toward Fremont Street when Martina first appeared in front of him. He’d sensed danger from her; madness radiated like heat off her body. Her thoughts were shielded, but swirling with wild schemes. He couldn’t read details, but he knew she intended to drag him into her folly. He’d done her a few favors in the past, eighty years ago, back in Vienna. He’d heard she and her gang were in town, and had considered leaving. But how could he leave the light? He told himself she didn’t know he was in Vegas. Stupid of him.

He’d run when he’d seen her, but Martina caught up fast enough. Now he was stuck with the crazy woman because she
was
stronger and smarter—and knew things about him it was safer others didn’t know.

Martina rose elegantly from her chair. She did imperious well. Not as well as, say, Catherine the Great, but Martina was certainly better looking. Eddie wondered if Martini would ever get the hang of usurping and keeping power the way old dumpy Catherine had.

She spat. On his clean floor. He’d never known a woman to spit before.

“Hey.”

“You know where the Duke sleeps,” her voice cut across his complaint.

Eddie stared at Martina. “What? Why would I—?”

“Because you make it your business to know such things.”

He made it his business to know everything. It was his business. Or had been until the light . . . It didn’t look like he was going to get to drink any light tonight if he didn’t shed Martina soon.

“What do you want with Duke?”

Martina stepped forward and put her hands on Eddie’s shoulders. Her claws dug into his skin. “I’m going to kill an Enforcer,” she told him. “And you’re going to help me.”

“What do you think, Clare?” Ben asked, whispering in her ear.

They were standing together, hip to hip, with his arm around her shoulder and hers around his waist at the very back of the dark theater, near the door. Smoke billowed on the stage, music blared as the audience applauded the performer’s latest trick. Much of Ben’s awareness was on the woman with him and the man on the stage, but his interest in them was also tempered by acute consciousness of the action in the casino behind him. The music of the slots was louder to him than the theater’s sound system. The energy generated by the gamblers was a constant thrum on his psychic nerve endings. Right now it was an even, steady hum of greed and excitement, background noise, nothing for him to worry about. He could take these few minutes out of his night for domestic activities.

The look Clare gave him was amused. She had a beautiful heart-shaped face and full, red lips. “Tell me what you want me to think.”

She was a companion, and as such didn’t technically have a say in anything her master wanted. According to the Laws of the Blood, that is. Ben figured the Laws had been drafted by bachelors and old maids, or maybe just plain spouse-abusing assholes. ’Cause anyone who had a real relationship with a companion knew that the way to a peaceful life was to have a little give-and-take in the mix. There could be a lot of sneaking around, backbiting, and scheming in a nest where the boss didn’t demand and give respect to the underlings. Ben had always run his nest as a business. He was the nest leader. He had the final say, and it could be a fatal say for any mortal that really got out of line if it had to be. But he listened to opinions, especially from companions.

Clare had been his number one squeeze for five years now. He valued her for her brains as much as for her body and blood and the psychic talent that was the spice a vampire needed to feed sexual hunger. He didn’t taste her as often as when they first got together. That was because he intended to keep her attached to him for as long as possible. She was a genius with computers and all the high-tech security systems that were necessary in the casino business these days. No reason to turn her into a sex-crazed mush-brained baby vampire and lose her expertise any sooner than he had to.

The bloom had worn off their psychic connection, but he respected her place in his household. “What do you think of Reese?” he asked her again.

“As a magician or as a mate? Your mate,” she added quickly when Ben shot out a burst of jealousy—jealousy that encompassed his possessiveness of both Clare and the mortal he hadn’t yet taken.

Ben shook his head. “I’m not confused about anything, am I?”

“Of course not,” she soothed his ego. “My master is always sure and confident. He’s not that attractive,” Clare added, looking back at the stage.

Even with the assistance of makeup, costuming, and stage lighting, Morgan Reese was not all that good looking. He had a good body thanks to hours spent working out, but he was on the short side. Ben knew that the man’s hair was light red and thinning under the black rug he wore on stage. His mouth was small and his eyes narrow. None of this detracted from the high-wattage charisma that blasted out from the stage when he performed. Reese held the audience with a look, a gesture, his own personal magic, and he was a damn fine stage magician besides. Even though his Welsh wizard stage persona didn’t exactly fit with the Silk Road’s Central Asian fantasy theme, the magician packed every seat in the theater of the casino floor every performance, and sent happy customers back out to gamble the rest of the night away.

It was the scent of real magic that first brought Ben into the theater the night Reese’s act opened. Curiosity quickly turned to personal interest.

“Looks aren’t everything.”

Clare grew tense, but after a few seconds’ hesitation, she whispered, “His personality’s not all that attractive, either.”

Ben didn’t disagree. Morgan Reese was all about Morgan Reese. He was all ego and arrogance, and ambition. The man wanted to get to the top of his profession, and would happily crush anyone who got in his way. “Reminds me of me.”